What’s really in that bottle of extra virgin olive oil?

Extra virgin olive oil fraud — it may sound dramatic, but it’s one of the food industry’s best-kept secrets. The bottle looks beautiful. The label promises quality. And yet something is often fundamentally wrong. As a producer of genuine extra virgin olive oil on a UNESCO estate near Assisi, I feel a responsibility to say this plainly: consumers are being deceived in three distinct ways. It’s time to name them.

1. Deliberate extra virgin olive oil fraud: the bottle that lies

In 2025, the Belgian Federal Public Service Economy launched an investigation after Het Nieuwsblad revealed that a bottle sold as “extra virgin” contained no olive oil whatsoever. Not a drop. Pure seed oil with colourings — neatly packaged with an Italian-sounding label.

This is not an isolated case. A landmark study by the UC Davis Olive Center found that around 69% of imported “extra virgin” olive oil in supermarkets fails to meet quality standards. Criminal networks profit enormously: fraudsters blend cheap refined olive oil or sunflower oil with beta-carotene or chlorophyll for the golden colour, attach an Italian label, and charge premium prices.

“Packed in Italy” is a classic trick. It simply means the bottle was filled there — the contents can come from anywhere.

American journalist Tom Mueller documented this in his explosive book Extra Virginity (2011): Italy exports more olive oil than it produces. The most recent figures from the European Commission confirm this is still the case. In 2024, Italy produced 248,000 tonnes of olive oil — but exported 344,000 tonnes. That is 38% more than its entire domestic harvest. At the same time, Italy consumes approximately 500,000 tonnes internally each year. The arithmetic is straightforward: Italy runs a deficit of hundreds of thousands of tonnes, filled with imported oil from Spain, Greece and North Africa — bottled in Italy and sold under an Italian premium label. “100% Italian” on the label is in many cases perfectly legal. Honest it is not.

The ultimate irony? Even the Italian consumer is a victim. With domestic consumption of 500,000 tonnes and a domestic harvest of just 248,000 tonnes, the average Italian is largely drinking imported oil from a bottle with an Italian label. The deception doesn’t stop at the border — it starts there.

2. Industrial hypocrisy: “natural” while nature pays the price

The second form of deception is subtler but equally serious. Large industrial producers sell their oil with images of sun-drenched hillsides and age-old traditions. The reality looks quite different.

In large industrial olive groves around the Mediterranean, olives are harvested at night using heavy machinery — because cooler night temperatures better preserve the aromas. These machines strip the olives from the trees with enormous force. But the birds sleeping in those trees at night are swept up along with them: thrushes, wagtails, finches, robins. During the day they could fly away. At night, blinded and disoriented by powerful floodlights, they have no chance.

Scientists estimate that millions of overwintering birds die this way every year — 2.6 million in Andalusia alone each harvest season. The problem was so severe that Spain and Portugal banned nocturnal mechanical harvesting in 2020, following pressure from BirdLife International. Outside Europe, that protection barely exists.

“Artisanal.” “Natural.” “Traditional.” Marketing words that mask an industry systematically damaging the natural world.

3. Amateur ignorance: well-intentioned but quality-free

The third category is less malicious but equally problematic for anyone seeking genuine quality. A growing number of hobby producers harvest olives from their own trees, leave them sitting in the boot of the car for a few days, then bring them to the nearest press.

What they don’t know: the moment an olive falls from the tree or is bruised, oxidation begins immediately. The longer the wait before pressing, the higher the acidity and the lower the quality. Top-quality olive oil is pressed within hours of harvesting. A wait of several days produces vierge at best — and lampante at worst, an oil not even fit for consumption.

That oil then leaves the door as “homemade extra virgin” for friends and family. Well-intentioned. But misleading.

How to recognise genuine extra virgin olive oil

A few concrete things to look for:

• Acidity on the label: real quality sits well below the legal limit of 0.8%. At Casa Astrid, ours is 0.2%.
• Harvest date, not just a best-before date: a best-before date tells you nothing. The harvest date tells you when the oil was actually made.
• Price as a signal: genuine extra virgin costs money to produce. A supermarket-priced bottle cannot be hand-picked, early-harvest oil.
• Dark, airtight packaging: light and oxygen are the enemies of quality. A clear bottle under a bright shelf light is not a good sign.
• Transparency about origin: not “packed in Italy” but a specific estate, a specific harvest year, a specific producer.

What Casa Astrid does differently

On our UNESCO estate near Assisi, olives are hand-picked — early in the season, when polyphenol levels are at their peak. The olives go to the press in the shortest possible time. No machines tearing through trees at night. No blending with other oils. No label trickery.

The result is an acidity of 0.2% — well below the legal limit — and an oil where you know exactly where it comes from: one estate, one harvest, one producer.

Extra virgin olive oil should not be a mystery. But as long as the industry continues to mislead consumers, transparency is the only genuine quality label.

Want to know exactly what’s in your bottle? Download our official laboratory report

Discover Casa Astrid extra virgin olive oil.